Inequality: the root of all problems?

[volatile]

I wonder if they include invention productivity, which dwarfs all else when it comes to increasing the average quality of life. It's fraudulent to let other countries do the inventing, then distribute those inventions across your population and claim you're some great friend to The People. You can't hand out inventions "for free" if they don't exist.

Are you talking about video games again?

 

[Francesca R]

I wonder if they include invention productivity, which dwarfs all else when it comes to increasing the average quality of life.

The phrase you quoted was my take on the authors' premise.

Anyway, the rate of innovation is not in their measurements of social problems, no. It (their measurements) is not a yardstick of economic freedom or prowess.

It's fraudulent to let other countries do the inventing, then distribute those inventions across your population and claim you're some great friend to The People. You can't hand out inventions "for free" if they don't exist.

Violation of international IP laws is indeed fraudulent, though hard to enforce other than via protectionism which cuts off your nose to spite your face. Aside from that, benefitting from others' innovation is merely capturing a consumers' surplus, which is fine. You're unlikely to be world leader buying other folks' creations though.

 

[MikeMangum]

I have recently been reading a lot of The Equality Trust's material and was wondering what other people thought of them. Their basic idea is that most social problems (physical and mental health, obesity, violence, teenage pregnancies drug abuse etc) in developed countries vary closely with the amount of income inequality within the country (it also seems true on a state level within the US).

Can anyone spot any major flaws in their evidence or reasoning? Because I am becoming a bit of a bore about this and wanting to interject it into every conversation I have, as it has such wide relevance. If someone found something majorly wrong with it, I might find myself able to talk about other things again.

I can spot a very major flaw in their reasoning: there have been countries that have attempted to address equality of outcome by implementing "The Salary", the results of which were not pleasant.

Equality of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity. Most people want both, when they are mutually exclusive. Increasing one necessarily decreases the other. Since their approach doesn't appear to factor in any of the costs, I'd recommend an even better way of dealing with "physical and mental health, obesity, violence, teenage pregnancies drug abuse etc": have the state kill anyone who has mential health, obesity, drug, or violence issues.

Ah, apparently I missed teenage pregnancies. Ok, any person who becomes pregnant in their teen years has her child taken from her and put up for adoption, and then becomes a "comfort woman" for 5 years. Problem solved.

Costs? What costs?

ETA: research has shown that social capital and trust is highest in communities that have high degress of ethnic homogeneity. Who knew that Ratko Mladic was ahead of his time in fostering social cohesion?

 

[AvalonXQ]

Not clear if they include that directly. It's also not relevant, since both Japan and Scandinavia also dwarf the United States in terms of "invention productivity," if you measure that in natural units like patents per capita.

... a list apparently topped by Luxembourg, bastion of 21st century innovation that it is. Not impressed with that measure.
I agree with beerina -- it's tough to know how well any of these countries would be doing if they didn't reap the benefits provided by the U.S.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Re innovation - I found this on The Equality Trust's website:

As a check on how inequality might affect creativeness and innovation, we have now looked at the relationship between inequality and the number of patents granted per head of population. There is a weak but statistically significant tendency for more equal societies to gain more patents per head than less equal ones.

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/frequently-asked-questions#innovation

ETA - thanks for the review Francesca.

 

[stilicho]

(bump)I bought "The Spirit Level" at the weekend, and wrote this review of it:


One of the sub-titles of this book ("Why Equality is Better for Everyone") is a little uninspiring as it hints at some kind of "Can’t we all be nice" outreach. But the content is deceptively methodological. Ambitious is it is to simplify a plethora of social negatives into one and tie them uniformly to variance in incomes (and ignore all other social strata, incidentally), the authors do this surprisingly well. Their story: Above some income-per-head threshold, social welfare (life expectancy, health, mental health, education, crime, trust, others) no longer improves much, but the more uneven the income distribution gets (which appears to happen as average income continues to rise) the more aggregate social welfare seems to unravel—and not solely for the unlucky relative poor but across society.

Sounds apocalyptic.

I'm always bothered by indices that rank Burkina Faso ahead of the US and Yemen ahead of the UK. I imagine those in the UK and the US would rather put up with a few pregnant teens or fat people.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

You seem to have missed the part where they are only discussing the richer developed countries.

 

[stilicho]

... a list apparently topped by Luxembourg, bastion of 21st century innovation that it is. Not impressed with that measure.
I agree with beerina -- it's tough to know how well any of these countries would be doing if they didn't reap the benefits provided by the U.S.

We're just fortunate the Pope isn't an inventor in his spare time. One patent a decade for an automatic Eucharist dispenser or a wrinkle-free chasuble and all other nations would bow down before the economic and intellectual might of Vatican City.

 

[stilicho]

You seem to have missed the part where they are only discussing the richer developed countries.

I understand that very well. But if data are available for a more representative sample then why not use them?

You wouldn't draw worthwhile conclusions about the game of baseball by simply comparing lead-off hitters.

 

[MikeMangum]

You seem to have missed the part where they are only discussing the richer developed countries.

Why? Why not add in North Korea and plot where it falls? Or Cuba? Or Zimbabwe?

Maybe they should do a regression analysis to see how strongly related income inequality is to actually being a "richer developed country" and include in their analysis countries like Burkina Faso.

 

[stilicho]

Why? Why not add in North Korea and plot where it falls? Or Cuba? Or Zimbabwe?

Maybe they should do a regression analysis to see how strongly related income inequality is to actually being a "richer developed country" and include in their analysis countries like Burkina Faso.

Or plot an analysis of pregnant teens per capita to fat people per capita by country. That might be interesting.

The BFI of successful patent applicants might even indicate something.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Because they are only claiming anything about the relationship in developed countries. Inequality becomes a big factor once you have acheived a certain standard.

 

[MikeMangum]

Because they are only claiming anything about the relationship in developed countries. Inequality becomes a big factor once you have acheived a certain standard.

Sure, and income inequality (we surely wouldn't want to confuse people by referring to it using the generic term "equality") just might be a highly determinative as to whether a society actually achieves and maintains "a certain standard".

 

[stilicho]

Because they are only claiming anything about the relationship in developed countries. Inequality becomes a big factor once you have acheived a certain standard.

But why? Why not just a comparison among Scandinavian countries? Maybe there's a dog in there somewhere. I'll bet it's Denmark--never trusted those guys.

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ETA: It's Iceland: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_tee_pre_percap-health-teenage-pregnancy-per-capita

Close enough, but is this to say the Iceland's deplorable ranking is due to wealth inequity? Whose should they borrow?